Karolina Killer Ch. 10 (2024)

Though my South Carolina foray was technically a success, I fell into a funk on the charter flight home Wednesday. The news that Talmadge had accepted two contracts to kill me was depressing, even though he was in jail and out of assassins. The folks who’d monetized their hatred of me on Karolina Killer, I feared, could find other killers easily enough.

On top of that, we’d suffered a casualty, Horace. I’d called Gwen Hampton from the FBO at the Myrtle Beach airport to ask how he was doing. It was 7 a.m. in Denver. She was happy enough to hear from me, but Horace refused to come to the phone. I could guess why. When last we’d spoken in the supermarket parking lot, I trivialized the damage he’d suffered in those trees by telling him to rejoin the fight after some “R&R.” I fancied myself an empathetic man. But I’d never much thought about the unbearable anguish that so many young fighters brought home from our Middle Eastern wars. I wished I’d sensed Horace’s anguish and responded unselfishly.

Deb’s passionate kiss, rendered at Jabara airport, eased the funk. I had to press ahead despite my failures. After we dropped Butch off at James’ office and headed home, I asked, “How would you go about finding the people who took out those murder contracts on Pa and me?”

She thought about it. “Delve into that awful web site to see if clues are embedded in the coding. Take a close look at the people who hate you. I’ll help you with that.”

“Jason Kittredge is working on the web site. But aren’t you conflicted out?”

“This morning, Dave gave me permission to help you on my own time. But I’m to pass on any leads we turn up to Barney and Robin.”

“That’s great, sweetheart. But before we do any of this, I need to go see Horace.”

She nodded. “You owe him.”

On Thursday morning I flew out to Denver and took a cab to Gwen’s house in Broomfield. She persuaded Horace to see me, but he was incapable of looking me in the eye and could not engage in sustained conversation. Five minutes into our strained reunion, Gwen beckoned me into the kitchen. We left him in the den, staring at the wall. She poured coffee for us.

“Don’t take his unresponsiveness personally, Harvey,” she said. “The local VA medical center is backed up, so my personal doc referred him to a psychiatrist, Dr. Eva Wentworth, who saw him right away. She diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder grounded in guilt and self-loathing.”

“You know what happened to him last Thursday, right?”

“He told me he killed a man who was trying to kill him.”

“That’s right. Horace seemed fine before I sent him into the trees where he encountered the man. Butch Becenti, his associate at the Holt organization, said that fighting for his life must have awakened some demons he acquired in Afghanistan.”

She nodded. “That’s a good metaphor for Dr. Wentworth’s diagnosis. Taking another life, even though he had no choice, destabilized him. Dr. Wentworth says he lacks the tools to recover on his own. Counseling, group therapy and the appropriate meds should rid him of his demons. Once he’s better, I’ll try to get him into the UC Denver program for veterans. He needs to find a gentler vocation.”

I said, “You’re a good person to take care of him, Gwen, especially since you met him only eight days ago. You got more than you bargained for.”

“I fell in love with him. I won’t dump him just because he’s sick.”

“Well, I’ll cover his tuition, medical bills and any in-home care he may need. Here’s a down payment.” I wrote a check for 10 thousand dollars and handed it to her. “Let me know if you need more.”

“I appreciate this, Harvey. Best you leave now. No need to say goodbye to him.” She saw me as a roadblock to Horace’s recovery. That hurt, but I couldn’t blame her.

Back at the airport, as I waited for my Wichita flight to be announced, I opened the phone app for the Myrtle Beach newspaper. I’d been keeping up with the fallout from Fenster Talmadge’s arrest on Tuesday. Today’s lead story reported Ada Talmadge’s decision, upon learning that her husband had given her control of his LLC, to sell all of his holdings. Two accountants versed in resort property values estimated the holdings to be worth at least 250 million. Ada stood to gross 200 million before taxes, minority member Angela Romano 50 million. Interviewed at the county detention center, Talmadge insisted that Romano forged the new LLC agreement on the day he was arrested. But his attorney, Sidney Hackshaw, backed up Romano’s assertion that Talmadge had executed the new agreement several weeks earlier.

A sidebar story reported that Benson Calhoun, Talmadge’s defense lawyer, was appealing Judge Harry Bridges’ decision to hold Talmadge without bail. Calhoun was also challenging Bridges’ order barring Talmadge from access to the internet.

I guffawed, drawing the attention of nearby travelers. Talmadge wanted internet access so he could change the Karolina Killer password, which, of course, I knew. I called Jason Kittredge, James Holt’s cybersecurity specialist. At 21, Jason was the only Holt associate without military experience. He was a white-hat hacker. I’d sent him Talmadge’s password via WhatsApp the previous evening.

“Dude,” Jason said, “we’re the new owners of that web site. How cool is that? I sent you a message about this. It includes the new password.”

“Thanks for getting right on it, Jason. It turned out to be really important.”

We rang off. I opened WhatsApp and read Jason’s message. <<s^A2^w,^W2^A>> was the new password. “Don’t let the complexity discourage you, Harvey,” he wrote. “It’s based on a Shakespeare saying, ‘Suit the action to the word, the word to the action,’ with ‘^’ standing for ‘the’.”

Clever. I wrote the quotation and password on a scrap of paper and continued reading. Jason had left up the “I’m in” features, including the dialog box, but disabled the “arrange payment” button.

He wrote, “This way we can warn hit targets that someone wants them dead. Otherwise, customers would find some other assassin to kill them. I changed the HTML code to capture the IP addresses of anyone who clicks the ‘I’m in’ button. It will also capture photos of users whose computers have cameras. IP addresses will give us their geolocations – such as greater Boston, etc. If I run a captured IP address through a search engine, I may learn some of the other sites that user has visited, giving us more clues to his identity. Finally, I’m digging through the metadata for clues to the identities of the clients who targeted you.”

I replied: “Love the KK changes. Any queries yet?”

His reply: “No. TTYL”

Talk to you later. I closed WhatsApp and opened the virtual private network link to a secure server in Chicago owned by Jaakko Immonen. Jaakko was a law school buddy from Finland, now a U.S. citizen. I logged in and opened the file containing my most closely held secrets. I entered the Shakespeare quote and password and signed off. In the men’s room, I tore the paper to shreds and flushed them down a toilet.

I got home late that afternoon. Deb was still at work, so I went up to Pa’s office and drew up a detractors list. At the top was Chad Longfellow.

Chad had attempted to rape Amanda, then his girlfriend, twice last year. The first time, at our house in Delano, she fended him off. The second time, a few days later, he waylaid her at the university. Using an air pistol, he shot her in the buttocks with a Purple Pill capsule. The capsule contained a GPS transmitter and a cyanide ampule that could be detonated with a phone or tablet app. Ronald Stefani, the arms dealer now based in suburban Chicago, invented the capsules and manufactured them for use by State Department intelligence agents. Back in the 1990s, Stefani had lived and worked in Wichita. He had made the capsules at a small factory on Second Street in Delano for several years. Now they were made in India.

Chad’s father, Carl, was one of a group of self-important local businessmen who called themselves The Committee. The Committee’s principal activities were corrupting public officials and indulging in weekly sex parties with younger women.

Carl and two other members had blackmailed Stefani into giving them some prototype capsules and the app that controlled them. Had he refused, they’d have exposed the crooked politicians who’d helped him set up the Second Street factory. Stefani would have faced no legal consequences himself; he had a contract with the federal government allowing him to make chemical weapons. But he’d forked over the prototypes rather than risk losing the contract, which made him millions. It was a decision he later came to regret.

Chad found his father’s stash of Purple Pill capsules and used one on Amanda. He threatened to detonate it with his father’s tablet unless she had sex with him. Fortunately, a surgeon removed the capsule before he could follow through on his threat. Dave Macht arrested him that same night.

Early this year, at Chad’s sentencing hearing for sexual assault and attempted murder, his attorney, Harold Pickens, had pitched 12 months of house arrest, probation, counseling and community service. But when Judge Hastings allowed victims and their loved ones to speak, I voiced strong support for Deputy DA Ted Delavan’s proposed 12-year minimum sentence. The judge had gone along with it.

As the bailiff led Chad away, he’d looked at me and shouted, “Fuck you and your bitch daughter, Rothko. I’ll get you for this,” underscoring Delavan’s argument that he felt no remorse. Chad was now locked up in the El Dorado penitentiary.

Could Chad have gotten onto Karolina Killer to order up a contract to kill me? I called Zach Murtha and asked him what, if anything, he knew about prison internet policy. “Is it possible for convicts to get into the deep web?”

“Not in Kansas,” he said. “My imprisoned clients can exchange e-mails with me on a confidential basis. They can also get into legal sites for research purposes. But they can’t look at porn or weapons sites. Nor can they or get into sites with numbered addresses. Why do you ask, Harvey?”

“During my South Carolina trip, I learned that Talmadge, through his deep-web assassin site, received two contracts to kill me, one of which included killing my father. Talmadge said he doesn’t know who they are. With the help of a cybersecurity specialist, I confirmed that he told me the truth.”

“Jesus, that’s awful,” Murtha said. “So you’re working up a list of suspects?”

“Right. I asked you about prison internet to see if I can eliminate Chad Longfellow. He’s serving a 12-year sentence at El Dorado. Sounds like I can.”

“You can’t,” Murtha said. “He may not be able to reach the deep web, but his friends and family can. They may be motivated to kill you. Family and friends often regard their imprisoned loved ones as victims of a miscarriage of justice.”

“Damn it. This thing keeps mushrooming on me.”

“Hey, don’t blame me. I’m just the messenger. Keep in touch. I’ll help you any way I can.”

Beset with futility and anger, I went downstairs and poured a slug of Wild Turkey. I looked out at the koi pond until I felt a semblance of equanimity.

A few minutes later, James and Amanda walked in, holding hands. He dropped her hand when he saw me.

As I stood up, Amanda hugged me. “Did you see Horace today? How’s he doing?”

“Not well, sweetie.”

James said, “His girlfriend, Gwen, called me this afternoon, Harvey. She said he wants to cancel his contract with my firm. I sent him a severance check for five thousand. I hate to see him go.”

“I hate it, too,” I said, “but his psychiatrist diagnosed him with PTSD. She wants him to get out of security work, and I’m afraid I agree.”

“Me, too,” James said.

“What happened to Horace?” Amanda demanded. “He was such a carefree guy.”

I looked at James. He shrugged. Well, she was a big girl now. So I said, “I sent Horace on an assignment a week ago in South Carolina and he had to fight for his life. He killed another man and it ended up ruining him.”

“That’s horrible.” She faced James. “You knew about this?”

He looked at her a few seconds. “Yes, Amanda. The other man, Jesse Brinkman, was set up to murder a police witness. Horace stopped him.”

“But–”

“It’s the nature of the business we’re in,” he said.

She shuddered. “You’re so cold about it.”

“No, I’m not. If I were, I’d be no better than Brinkman. I hate what happened.”

She was shaking her head. “I thought I knew you, James.” She left the room.

As she ran up the steps, he said, face stricken, “Well, I guess that’s that. I was falling in love with her.”

“She needs some time to think it through.” But I was relieved that their relationship appeared to be over. She really was too young for him.

A few minutes after James left, Deb walked in holding a thick file folder. She set it on a side table and hugged me. “Hi, handsome. Did I mention I’m glad you’re back?”

I kissed her. “The redundancy is most welcome. What’s in the file?”

“Copies of the case notes that Barney and Robin made when the investigation was active. Robin said to tell you it will become active again if we come up with new leads.”

“Did one of them happen to interview Chad Longfellow?”

Deb said, “I’d be surprised if they didn’t. But look at them later. You can help me cook while you tell me about your day.”

We repaired to the kitchen, where she put me to work chopping celery, onions, carrots and tomatoes fresh from Pa’s vegetable garden. She was making a vegetarian pasta sauce. As we worked, she said, “Chad’s the logical choice for a hard first look. I still get chills thinking about his lack of remorse for the horrible things he did to Amanda.”

“The only problem is that he couldn’t have gotten onto Karolina Killer himself. According to Murtha, who would know, inmates can’t get into the deep web. He had to have had help.”

“His mother, perhaps?”

“I’m inclined to doubt it. Elma Longfellow was upset that Chad got himself into so much trouble, but she blamed Carl for it. The man and his fellow Committee members were sexual deviants. I think she’s glad Carl is dead.”

“Well, the answer could be in that file. I’m pretty sure Robin talked to Chad.”

Later that evening, up in Pa’s office, I went through the file folder. Robin Morrison had indeed gone to the El Dorado prison to talk to Chad. Possibly because she was an attractive woman, he’d answered her questions. Chief among them: “Did you take out a contract on Harvey Rothko’s life?” Answer: “No.” She recorded her impression that his answer seemed truthful.

But Robin hadn’t known about Karolina Killer.

I was reading through the other pages in the file when Jason called me on WhatsApp. “Someone left a note in the Karolina Killer dialog box a few minutes ago. It said, ‘Why haven’t you carried out our contract?’ What should I say in reply?”

“That we’re still working on it. Please tell me you captured the IP address.”

“Yes. And a jpeg photo. The geolocation is greater Wichita. The user is a good-looking older woman. I’ll send the photo to you.”

“Great work, Jason.”

The photo arrived a few seconds later. The woman had short dark hair, pale cheeks and brow and plump crimson lips. Creases beside her huge hazel eyes suggested that she was approaching 40. She seemed familiar.

I took my phone down the hall to Amanda’s bedroom. The door was open. She was reading in bed and beckoned me in. “What’s up, Daddy?”

I showed her the photo. “Do you recognize this woman?”

“Yes. It’s Professor Klara-with-a-k Gunther, my creative writing teacher.”

“Was she by any chance Chad’s teacher, too?”

She nodded. “Last fall. I remember that he had a crush on her, though she’s old enough to be his mother. At the time, I thought it was harmless.”

“Well, her face is striking.”

She rolled her eyes. “She’s what you older men would call buxom, too. She dresses like a much younger woman, to call attention to her curves.”

“Buxom? I’ve never used that word in my life. Is she a good teacher?”

“Yes, but she has a dark outlook. She thinks my stories are too hopeful, but I usually get an A minus.”

“Hopeful is good, considering what Chad did to you.”

“Professor Gunther is always telling us to draw from our real-life experiences to create good fiction, but Chad is one experience I would never write about.”

“That’s good, sweetie. Therapy is a much better path to recovery.”

“I agree. What’s this about, Daddy?”

After I told her, she said, “That bitch. I’ll make my next story about her and Chad and have them die in a murder-suicide pact. He kills her, then himself. No. She kills him with poison, no, a knife, and then shoots herself. Of course, I’ll change their names. How’s that for dark?”

I said, “You’ll probably get an A, but don’t reveal the source of your inspiration.”

Next: Chapter 11, Vigilante